Aberforth Smaller Companies has published its results for the year ended 31 December 2015 (pretty fast!), over 2015 the net asset value total return was 10.2%, more or less matching the 10.6% return posted by the Numis Smaller Companies (excluding investment companies) Index that the fund uses as its benchmark. The share price return was 13.9% however as the discount narrowed. The total dividend for the year was 26p, up 5.1% on 2014.
Bizarrely, for a fund that is driven by stock picking, the report seems to go out of its way not to mention the name of any investment – no top ten holdings, no portfolio changes and no performance attribution information at the stock level. We are told though that overall stock selection decisions cost them 0.16%.
It does look though, on Morningstar’s numbers, that this fund has been the worst performing UK smaller companies fund since the market turned at the end of April 2015 (based on NAV total return figures to the close of business on 26 January 2015, ASL’s return was -6.5% against a sector median of +1.0%).